I’m going to use a crude analogy to express my quibble with the above wording. It’s one thing to heat a sealed vessel containing a gas. It’s another thing to provide an outlet by which the pressure can be vented. On balance, I wonder if an increase in empowerment and entitlement does a great deal to increase the pressure in the vessel, so to speak. It seems to me that what it does is to provide the outlet for the pressure (or the idea of an outlet). It makes the venting of the pressure seem feasible. Rather than increasing the impetus toward rioting, it seems to me rather that a growing sense of entitlement and empowerment removes barriers to rioting, making way for whatever pressure or impetus there may be from others sources.

Of course I’m not a social scientist, and I don’t play one on TV or on the Internet. This is what seems intuitively correct to me.

The name is a double pseudonym. Ralf might know where it comes from. Denke an die Barockzeit!

“Furthermore, I hope you would agree that the rioting by blacks in the 60s and 70s did not occur solely because blacks had begun to feel entitled and empowered.”

Actually, yes the rising political power and social acceptance was the major driver of the riots in that era. Remember, conditions were much worse in the past and African-Americans rarely rioted.

Prior to the 60′s, African-Americans were virtually powerless and the authorities had no compunctions about dealing with them harshly. The Oklahoma National guard once shelled a black neighborhood in the 1920s even though the riot was started by whites. The riots occurred after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the implementation of the first stages of the Great Society.

Did the riots occur solely because the increasing power of African-Americans? No, but the increasing power was a controlling factor. Had they not had the increased power the riots would not have occurred regardless of any provocations.

Great name by the way.

First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council link…

Aack! I meant this:

Furthermore, I hope you would agree that the rioting by blacks in the 60s and 70s did not occur solely because blacks had begun to feel entitled and empowered.

It seems to me that the most you could say is that feeling entitled and empowered is one among several (perhaps many) necessary preconditions for rioting of this sort. I don’t think you could plausibly claim that it alone approaches being a sufficient precondition for rioting, though.

My sense is that there are scads of people in the world who in some sense feel both entitled and empowered, but who are not in the least inclined to riot.

Furthermore, I hope you would agree that the rioting by blacks in the 60s and 70s occurred solely because blacks had begun to feel entitled and empowered. Surely the way they had been treated in the years before played some role (a huge role, I would say) together with their growing empowerment and sense of entitlement to give rise to the riots.

Likewise, the rioting in France is, it seems to me, to be understood in part out of the negative circumstances in which the rioters live, and not merely out of a growing sense of entitlement and empowerment.

Crane Brinton may not have been right in everything, but I do think he was on to something with his theory of “rising expectations”.

I agree. Criminals and political agitators can be very important in creating riots. This article over at Cato.org talks about “Entrepreneurs” i.e. individuals who try to trigger a riot for their own purposes.

I think the real trigger for these riots is the perception of paralyses on the part of the French political system. The rioters saw an opportunity to bitch-slap the establishment and the took it.

A further detail you need to include in your analysis is answering this question: Who amongst the residents of the banlieus initiated the riots, and who then opportunistically got involved in them? The sense I get is that the criminal gangs were pushing back hard against Sarkozy’s initial attempts to “retake” these areas and bring them under police control. These people had a personal and financial stake in the status quo, they were hardened criminals and they had a reasonable and it turns out correct assessment that the cops did not have the will to take them on seriously. So, they started setting things on fire. After a few days of no police response, as Wretchard’s chart shows, there was an inflection point, where lots of people started to join in either just to raise Hell or to further a political agenda.

That will happen when women finally wake up to the fact that I’m more attractive than Brad Pitt.

James